


Undiscovered Country

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: During Canon, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-10
Updated: 2005-10-10
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, a traveller returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undiscovered Country

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Shayheyred. Thanks to irisbleufic for beta work.

 

 

By all logic, Horatio should have returned to Wittenberg when Hamlet sailed to England. He had nothing to keep him in Denmark, no particular loves to hold him where he knew many in part, but only one in whole, and that one banished. But he had neither duty, honor, nor pleasure to call him back to his studies: he had lingered in Elsinore so long that he might indeed be the truant he had called himself in jest. This bloody business had not yet come to its final resting place. Hamlet would return.

So Horatio remained at Elsinore, and allowed the troubled queen to cling to him as an unexpected but welcome surrogate for her son, and watched helplessly as the lady Ophelia's mind broke under the strain of a father lost at the hand of her lost lover.

Then, scarce a week from Hamlet's departure, a sailor came with not merely news of Hamlet, but a letter as well. The letter spoke of pirates and an interrupted journey, then concluded, _Repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear._

Hamlet was returned.

"Where is he?"

"He said as I was to _show_ you, my lord," said the sailor. "Even 'ere the walls may have ears, aye, and tongues too."

There were a few small things to gather, and other letters to deliver first, to the queen and to the king, but they might be handed to another of the courtiers, who accepted them with hardly more than a glance and a shake of his gray head. Then the sailor bowed and turned away. Horatio followed.

He had been down past the grander streets and houses before: it was in one of these lower places, months gone now, that he had stopped to quench his thirst before assaying him to the castle, and there met Marcellus, who so brought him into the midst of all the amazement. But he did not recognize the particular door upon which the sailor now knocked, thrice, then twice together, in a peculiar tattoo.

The door swung open as of its own accord. The sailor gestured Horatio through. Horatio squared his shoulders, then stepped inside. The door shut behind him.

He found himself in a large room, with a fair fire crackling on the hearth. A few men sat at tables scattered about, bent over their ale and meat. In the far corner, a hooded man raised his head and looked to see who had come.

Horatio needed no further signal. He crossed to the hooded man. "My noble lord," he said, keeping his voice as quiet as he might, and offered his hand.

The hooded man took it, and with his other pushed back to the hood. "You came well upon the hour, Horatio," Hamlet said, with one of his rare smiles. "Nay, upon the _moment_."

"As well as e'er expected." This from a man Horatio had not noticed, seated across the table from Hamlet. "So long as he keeps the half of your promise -"

"He shall," Hamlet said, without any of the mockery to which Horatio had become reluctantly accustomed. He had not looked away from Horatio. "I must ask you to requite them, Horatio. I am come naked back to Denmark, and cannot do so myself."

"Then I'll clothe you in my favor, poor though it is," Horatio assured him.

By good fortune - at least to Horatio's slender purse - what the pirate wanted was not only gold, but promises of another sort, a safe haven as there once had been when Hamlet's father had roamed the seas. More, they wanted tales, and told them with as much gusto as they heard them.

Horatio heard the roar of far-off cannons, distant salute to the king's carousing. Here in this inn they had drunk as deep, and to what end? Hamlet had not yet told him a tithe of what he promised. He leaned forward and murmured in his lord's ear, "Where didst thou mean to pass this night?"

"Here, Horatio," Hamlet said, not bothering to lower his voice. "But not upon a bench: I have more care for thee than that. Ho, landlord!"

Even with no money in his purse, the prince carried all before him. Within the space of minutes, Horatio followed Hamlet, hooded once more, up the creaking stairs to a small wooden room, where the door closed upon the echoing laughter from below and left them alone.

God in Heaven. _Alone._

Horatio saw, from the corner of his eye, something fall, and raised his gaze slowly to find Hamlet's garments draped over a chair, careless as leaves fallen in autumn. Startled, he looked up complete as Hamlet pulled free of the last of them and stood naked as ever Adam in Eden. Hamlet turned and met Horatio's gaze, and oh, he had forgotten the sweet darkness that lingered in his lord's eyes when he smiled.

"Come, Horatio," Hamlet said, as he set his hand to Horatio's own garments. "Tomorrow will be hour enough to weight your ear with such tales as I have to tell. Tonight, I would take refuge in more pleasing sounds."

With an effort, Horatio recalled himself from his amazement and set to shedding his own garb. "I cannot imagine any more pleasant to mine ear than your voice, my lord."

"I can. My words of late have held poison more oft than perfume. This dread duty has stolen my breath from more gentle things. Oh, Horatio -" Hamlet reached up and cupped Horatio's cheek. "I owe you far more and deeper than voice and breath and a plain accounting of my days, but I cannot think beyond wherewith I am charged, or my purpose falls short and blunted."

"Then do not think." Horatio turned his head and kissed Hamlet's palm. "Let me stand watch this night."

Hamlet opened his mouth as if to say yes, then suddenly laughed. "Oh, this is vile: I would answer you _yes_ in as fine a fashion as you deserve, but the finest words I can summon seem to me but gilded trash."

Horatio felt laughter rising in his blood, too, competing with the wine he'd drunk. "Then, my Hamlet, I shall stop your words complete," he said, and kissed Hamlet at last.

Hamlet's mouth lay lax under his for the barest instant. Then he woke to it, returning the kiss tenfold, waking fire in lips and hands and loins. In face, too: they had never shared such intimacies in Wittenburg, never without the cloak of clothing between them, and Horatio could feel the flush come to his cheeks even as he drank in Hamlet's kisses and the feel of his prince's arms around him, drawing him near. The newness of it stole his thoughts as much as Hamlet's nearness did.

They were not so stolen he could not play the lover's part, and play it in all truth. The candle was left to gutter; the moon's slender beams from beyond the window would be light enough. Horatio drew Hamlet to the bed and kissed him once more, then laid himself down.

Hamlet stood beside the bed for a moment more before he crawled up to seat himself upon the bed as well. He did not lie down, however, only sat, one hand flat upon Horatio's belly as if he would keep him thus.

"Do your thoughts still fly, my lord?" Horatio said. This stillness seemed likely to cool his hopes and his blood alike.

"They go in circles, Horatio," Hamlet answered. He shifted so he lay next to Horatio indeed, up upon one elbow, the silvered light stealing his shadows and lending him grace upon grace so he seemed a statue or a god upon this bed. "The hours press leaden upon me, and I cannot be certain but that I shall die in your lap and leave you unrequited."

"In faith, I'll teach you otherwise," Horatio answered, and rolled over, pinning Hamlet beneath his weight.

The tide of their passions had receded, but not beyond return. Horatio called it back with kisses and caresses until his prince trembled, the sound of Horatio's name broken upon his lips. Horatio strained against Hamlet, lost, never desiring to be found again. Even as Horatio shuddered apart in Hamlet's arms, Hamlet followed him a heartbeat later, and they were left clinging to each other like sole survivors of a wreck.

Once his heart had regained its pulse within his breast, Horatio raised his head. Hamlet had prophesied true: he lay as one struck, lax with weariness and pleasure altogether. Horatio reached up and stroked his lord's cheek.

"Good night, sweet prince," he whispered, and rested his head once more upon Hamlet's shoulder, there to sleep.

* * *

_The rest is silence._

But it was not.

The time was yet out of joint: words and deeds were so piled upon each other that Horatio feared they would never be set out clearly, _it happened thus_. But he had been left to sort them and put all in order like a good housewife after a holiday.

Hamlet's body - oh, heaven and earth, that he must think so! - was yet warm in his arms. Horatio did not rise as he answered the importunate questions of prince and noble. That these answers came without hesitation or stumbling to his tongue, he gave thanks, though it was in truth a simple matter of delay that he spoke, a demand of audience and a promise of a fuller history than any living knew except himself.

"But let this same be presently performed," he finished, "even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance on plots and errors happen." His voice sounded clear within his empty heart; well, well. Hamlet's body was cooling.

The English ambassador would not look upon him. His eyes flickered now here, now there, as if unwilling to light upon the bloody sorrow before him. Prince Fortinbras looked at him long and steady, then nodded once.

"Let four captains bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage," he bade them all, then looked away upon the fallen Laertes, dead Gertrude, Claudius in his blood and filth. "Take up the bodies: such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss." A gesture brought his captains forward.

Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius: Horatio paid them no mind. They were dead and beyond the reach of mortal respect and kindness, nor did he owe them more than what words already lay upon his tongue. But as the captains closed upon him, the silence in him broke. He knew not what further tears might streak his face, nor what further seeming might be written upon his brow, but the foremost captain checked his stride, and bowed to him as he might to Fortinbras.

"We are but three, my lord," he said, for Horatio's ear alone. "Thy place is undisputed."

"I thank thee humbly," Horatio said, and rose to his feet at last. Hamlet's body was not yet cold to the touch. "Let thy prince direct us: I know not where the stage shall be erected."

"Before the chapel," said the captain.

"It is well." There might all the offices of the dead be performed, and his own dread office too. With Hamlet arrayed upon their shoulders, the four of them left the room.

* * *

The whispers began ere Fortinbras was crowned, and every tale came to this: ghosts walked in Elsinore.

The old king Hamlet slept once more, or at least Horatio saw him no more, but as the days passed into weeks, the bloody chaos he had left in his spectral wake echoed through the stones of castle and town. Footsteps without benefit of living man to make them paced back and forth in the hall by the king's apartments, and stayed for neither guard's challenge, nor scholar's questions. Lady Ophelia returned to the tree whence the waters had claimed her, and sang sweet snatches of roundelays. Horatio had witnessed the former unflinching: after all else had startled his eyes and ears, no slight patter of feet could chill him. The shade of a mad girl could have no omen to betoken for their fragile state: he assured Fortinbras, when asked. If Ophelia had anything of a more intimate nature to tell, he could not be the ears to receive her words, he least of all men in the world.

He waited hours together in the lobby, head bent in feigned study over heavy ledgers, but the one ghost he longed with all his heart to see did not appear, not even so much as a footstep.

He could not leave Denmark. He had fulfilled Hamlet's last commandment to the utmost breath, but now the whispers turned and caged him with the ghosts, saying that he spoke with Hamlet's voice, so Fortinbras would not bear but that he stayed and advised him. For this, Horatio had trained in Wittenburg, but that made the employment no sweeter to his taste. His days stretched before him into gray nothingness, with none to bring even the hope of death to lighten them.

Then came the night when Horatio remained in conference with Fortinbras far past the hours of sleep. The bell trembled upon the toll of four before he was released, and made his weary way to the rooms where he slept, when sleep would come. He hesitated just without the door, his hand upon the latch; within he heard such shuffle as might be caused by someone waiting. Some messenger from Fortinbras, reminded late of a final sentence to impart. Horatio bowed his head, then opened the door.

The one within raised his head from the book whereat he read, and smiled. The whole imprinted itself upon Horatio's eyes: the suit of inky black, as if for some finer meeting than this; the sun-lacked pallor of face and hands; the dark eyes that had ever held his soul within their depths.

_My lord!_

He knew not if he had spoken it aloud. The shade rose to its feet, but ere it could address itself to speech, a distant cock crew, and Hamlet wavered and vanished before Horatio's eyes.

Horatio fell to his knees and wept.

He did not weep long - he had emptied himself of tears, and though the salted reservoir might refill itself, it did not do so with such speed that he might give his grief let with tears to shame Niobe. He brought his shuddering breath under his governance once more, then rose to his feet, shut the door, and addressed himself to sleep.

He thought he surfaced from the abyss of sleep, and found himself elsewhere, upon the wrinkled sheets of a room not his own. Someone knelt beside him, hand upon his shoulder as if he had shaken Horatio to wakefulness.

His mind still mazed, Horatio questioned not the where or how, only said, "My lord, you should not have let me sleep so." He pushed back the sheet and made to rise.

Hamlet did not move, nor take his hand off from Horatio's shoulder. "You still do sleep, Horatio. We speak but in the semblance of a dream."

Horatio opened his mouth to protest, and then waking memory over-rushed his mind, death and loss piled high. He felt himself tremble upon true wakefulness, but Hamlet seized his arm in a grip so terrible that the marks of his fingers would surely linger.

"Do not let thy mind be lost upon this chance," he said, leaning forward so his very breath brushed Horatio's ear. "If I could speak with thee while thy waking mind still would grant me utterance, I would do so; but though I am not damned, still I may not linger past the cock's crow."

Horatio raised one trembling hand. Hamlet felt warm beneath his fingers, and sweet breath caused his chest to rise and fall beneath Horatio's touch. "It is a dream," he said.

"No. I am no creation of thy brain, but, in soberest truth, thy Hamlet." Hamlet's grip tightened further upon Horatio's arm. "I cannot stay: though I am not confined to some stern prison-house to bear the sufferings of my sins, I have still to learn all the shapes and laws that must guide me, and dare not push beyond. Hold this truth within thy heart, however, as close as thy own soul: I remember thee still."

When Horatio woke, he lay in his own bed. Upon his arm he found livid marks, such as would be left by such a grasp as he had felt in the vision.

He rose, dressed himself, then sent to Fortinbras to beg audience. The new king needed not Horatio's advising; he had others, with more than book-learning and the fickle love of the people. For his own part, as he waited, Horatio turned his mind to how to ask what he desired. He did not have his prince's skill with words, to so fence his interlocutor about that he could not but speak to the purpose Horatio desired, but he could speak with all his heart.

_Absent thee from felicity a while-_

_I remember thee still._

It had been a while, and more than a while. Long enough that he had near to grown numb to the shattered pieces of his soul lying scattered about his feet. A poor heart indeed, to pour into his words, but it must be enough. When word returned that the king would see him, he went.

He found Fortinbras alone, poring over close-inked reports of state. He looked up and gestured Horatio to approach. "I trust you have rested well," he said.

"Well enough, your majesty."

Fortinbras smiled, though not, it seemed, at Horatio. Certainly he had not spoken any great wit. "Then you improve upon my own gifts of fate. I face the Polack's thousand spears and flinch not, but here we take arms against a thousand thousand whispers."

"They do not doubt your election to the kingship -"

"None dare. Such would be simple treason, as simply treated: I am well acquainted with those methods. No, say rather that Demark itself shivers, as if the solidity of earth beneath our feet gave way into the seas. We are too much haunted."

He would again have such an opening. "I have not all the answers to those whispers, my gracious lord, but I have had too many."

"What do you mean?"

"My voice it was that named Claudius murderer, and all associated sorrows that now stalk the streets without need for the shadows of night," Horatio said.

"It was the truth -"

"-and sacred promise, but truths can oft wound us worse than lies. The one beguiles us and wraps us in soft sweetness until we are left blind and know it not; the other is sterner steel, and oft while cutting through the lies, leaves us with bruised hands and bloodied hearts."

"The worser, perhaps, for those who chose the lie," Fortinbras said. "Have you a way to cut us a path through this sorrow to a certain clarity? I have not forgot that you asked somewhat of the Dane, but I cannot let you go until -"

"The answer lies there," Horatio said. "They speak too much of Horatio, not as I am, but as Hamlet's shadow." That truth had lost its edge, to Horatio's mind. How oft had he been approached, not in himself, but as a way to glance at the prince, and come indirectly to the point? "Let that shadow pass to some other post, and so take from their constant sight this daily remembrance. Without I stand before them, they shall forget, and you reign in the sun-gifted clarity you seek."

"This is what you sought?"

"My lord, it is."

Fortinbras rose to his feet abruptly, and began to pace. "Such places as are under my governance and might suit your well-thought purpose, good Horatio - I cannot send you to Norway."

"My lord, I did not think it."

"There I knew such places where a man might vanish, ill thought though it is for a prince to know." Fortinbras wheeled around, his eyes intent upon Horatio once more. "Here - if you will trust my love, to the frontier shall you go."

"I had thought it settled after your last action."

"It will not be settled until the Polack accepts the governance of our state," Fortinbras said with a grimace. "I cannot swear but that he might attempt a rash action, but except for such a mischance, there might you regain yourself, and allow the foolish crowd to fade into a gentler oblivion."

So long as Ophelia sang in her tree, such a gentle oblivion would not occur, no more than Horatio himself would forget, even were his noble prince never to appear before his eyes again. But Horatio said no such matter. "At your command, good my lord," he said, and bowed.

"It is my wish," Fortinbras said. "I shall give commandments directly. You may not leave today: it would seem banishment thus, and it is not so. But tomorrow you shall escape this hydra-headed court of Elsinore, and go with all my love to the Polish frontier."

Horatio bowed again, and left.

Some few there were in Denmark who deserved the courtesy of a farewell from his own lips rather than a note delivered by messenger or news murmured from afar. These private meetings passed more easily than he deserved. Only Marcellus questioned why he meant to leave this fair court, and his words held a quietness that reminded Horatio that not only he alone had known and loved the prince. He gave Marcellus halting half-truths and did not speak of ghosts.

The day dragged out to centuries, but night came at last. Horatio knew not what he expected of the evening. His ship would leave with the dawn, and all sense dictated that he should ready his trunk to take from Elsinore the same few possessions that he had brought from Wittenberg, then address himself to sleep. But sense no longer governed him. Each separate limb trembled as with an ague and pinned his eyes open to the uninhabited dark.

He could not have said where the boundary between wakefulness and dreaming lay, the one eased at last into the next by such small degrees. Hamlet's voice whispered in his ears as if some distant breeze, so it was no shock to open eyes his eyes to discover his prince seated before him, perched upon a table's corner like some young hawk unhooded.

"-not limitless," he was saying. "I am not bound by what heavy sins are upon me to the cold church's yard, with but colder priest's prayers to fill my ears, nor does the hot echo of my blood upon the ground call me back to moan and gibber upon certain hours until justice is repaid, but neither may I walk beneath the sun's gentle rays, and in some truer seeming of a man with breath to him give thee what comfort and aid is mine to summon to thy service."

"Did you attempt it?"

Hamlet did not look away, but neither did he smile at the question. "This morning I followed you from the land beyond, where all sleepers' minds may rest in the night hours. But at the boundary stood as 'twere a door, tall and broad as any church, and when I lay my hand upon it, a voice spoke and would not let me pass."

"Whose voice was it?"

"God's truth, I know not." Hamlet stood abruptly, as if he would in fact take flight. "The daylight hours are denied to me. I pray you, Horatio," he knelt down before Horatio's chair and clasped Horatio's hand in one of his, "let me hear from your lips what passed!"

"It is settled," Horatio said. He raised Hamlet's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. "I leave with the dawn."

Hamlet's eyes closed, and for a heart's beat Horatio feared the dream would end and leave him alone, snatching at fragments of remembered words. But this night-vision did not shiver and reform into some matter unrelated to the beginning after the way of dreams, but remained solidly where it had been. Hamlet opened his eyes once more, and pulled Horatio into a crushing embrace. "Horatio," he whispered, voice muffled against Horatio's neck, and then his eloquent prince was silent.

Horatio did not weep - not for lack of tears, for this was a dream where tears might flow never ending, and had ere this time, but for that his Hamlet held him, warm and capable of grasping. The tears might wait for when he woke, alone and empty.

Hamlet smiled against his neck, and spoke again.

"Dost thou recall thy wooing?"

"Well enough, my lord - oh, of _all_ the remembrances - "

"I'd have none other." Hamlet loosed him within his arms, though not so far that he could not taste his beloved's breath. "Nay, be still and let me speak."

"The tale is not unknown to me," Horatio protested, though weakly and without heart to his words. "I lived it -"

Hamlet stopped his words with a kiss. "Though a man may wade through the streams that flow into the great confluence of history, he oft cannot say what he has gotten thereby but damped buskins. In this are other's eyes needed." He kissed Horatio once more, then rose from where he had knelt. "I say again, I'd have none other."

"You overbear me, my sweet lord," Horatio said, and obeyed as Hamlet's hands drew him from the chair where he sat, past the table, toward the softness of a bed decked all in unmarred white.

"It was not a year that we had shared rooms, two since we had met, and though I had marked thee out as one who might be trusted to the far reaches of the world, I had not seized what opportunity had come to me to test thy mettle beyond such wandering speeches as pass over books and wine, or amidst the carousing of others with whom we passed our time."

As he spoke, Hamlet bent his fingers to the undoing of Horatio's garments, which refused to melt away after the manner of breathless dreams, as if he were Horatio's servant. Horatio aided him after a moment's shock. Surely he did not mean - what temptation was this, that they might lie together as if Hamlet were living still?

"Then I returned, from what idle pastime I remember not, so far into the dark watches of the night that thou hadst returned thee to thy chamber and slept. Yet when I set my candle down, I saw my tables lying disarranged beside my bed. Nay, let not shame touch thy cheek, Horatio." Hamlet kissed him again, one hand gentle against the flush of Horatio's face. "'Twas little enough, and much my mind perplexed, so that I wondered if it was no more than misremembering. But there are those whom I would not have read my inmost thoughts, express them as I will, and so I turned my mind to discover the truth."

Hamlet did not undress himself likewise, but left Horatio naked before him and with the silent command of his hands upon Horatio's skin, urged him back upon the bed. Horatio lay against the pillows, and knew he trembled beneath that imperious touch, but cared not. His prince would not press him beyond what he might bear. Not again.

"There are great and subtle traps of which I had even then heard tell, to catch a stolen secret. But day followed day without those written words appearing in idle mockery upon the tongues of those I called my fellows, until I doubted mine own thought, and put trap and doubt to test alike in this: while yet you all caroused without, I withdrew into my chamber, left my tables open to the eye, and threw myself down as if to sleep."

Feet, the curves of Horatio's legs, up around his nether parts, but not lingering there. These were not the soft caress of a lover, but the explorations of a blind man or the shapings of a potter, remolding Horatio into a new Adam of this far country that he touched in dreams. Horatio flushed again, for that the urgent desire of his body did not abate beneath this touch, the invisible press of Hamlet's eyes, and the ever-present murmur of Hamlet's voice telling him a tale he thought he had known.

"Thou camest to me then, with a knock upon my door and thy voice saying my name. I answered not, but feigned sleep and watched thee as thou entered my room and laid eyes upon my tables. Thou didst stand there reading, I know not how long, except that the time was little enough that no call for thee went up from the general revelry, none noticed that thou hadst stepped away. Then thou murmured my name again as if 'twere the appellation of the highest angel in heaven, and shut my tables upon themselves, and turned back, the door shut again behind thee."

Down his arms to confirm the shape of each separate finger, then up once more as if he would forget the lines of Horatio's face did he not trace them anew with his hands. Horatio scarce dared breathe. He knew not what Hamlet intended, but to ask would break the flow of the tale, and in truth he needed no answer. He raised one hand and laid it upon Hamlet's chest, and felt his prince's heart beating beneath his trembling palm.

Hamlet caught up that hand and kissed it, then placed it back on the bed firmly as if to say _stay, not yet_ , but did not hesitate in his words.

"Thy reasons, terrible as they must have been to drive you past what courtesy demanded; the wound within thy heart that so bled into your voice that having once heard the deepest truth of thy love, it was not possible I should again overlook it; the stern edicts that should govern both our conducts alike - I shall not now enumerate all the thoughts that flew within my mind, circling without rest upon this single truth: of all those walking betwixt heaven and earth, to none other did I _desire_ to entrust my tangled mysteries but to thee."

For the first time in long minutes, Horatio remembered this was a dream. Hamlet's garments did not melt away any more than his own had done, but they seemed to glide from Hamlet's skin with grace unwonted even to him. Then it did not matter that it was a dream, as Hamlet joined him on the bed and pressed him down onto the cool sheets with a kiss.

"So I laid my snares a second time, to catch a coney in." Hamlet breathed the words against Horatio's lips, yet every syllable rang clear. "I watched thee in between, with such conversation as chance and yearning should allow, and saw with mine own eyes what I had but glanced at with the mind, that thou didst not seek advantage but only purest truth. In that purity thou won what was already thine, and my snares became a binding."

"You needed none." The words came at a gasp, brought forth from the liquid gold of his Hamlet's words and the press of skin upon skin.

"Yet we are bound. I have no stern vengeance to call me, nor drear message from these distant lands, bidding those who hear me to repent them of their sins." Each word, each phrase, brought with it a slow, coaxing thrust against Horatio. "What mercy has been granted me, I grant to you."

Mercy! Oh, but this was cruelest mercy of its kind, sips only from the river Lethe that did not linger on the tongue. He trembled at the edge of pleasure; oh, it could not possibly _be_ -

"Of this I cannot repent," Horatio groaned aloud. "I pray you -"

"In this thy prayers are answered." There was something like laughter in Hamlet's voice for a quicksilver moment, but it was gone again, lost beneath shivering recklessness as Horatio lost himself, his pleasure and his lord's commingled in his mind. He thought to lie awake and savor what had passed, but what seemed sleep crept up upon him and swept him under without the chance to say nay.

He woke again with a start. His room - his room at Elsinore, and none other - stood in the faint-limned gray that meant the dawn would soon break forth, but still not yet. Horatio turned his head from the window's pale taunts and saw, oh God and all His angels, saw Hamlet lying there asleep, one hand in silent possession upon Horatio's chest, not dream at all but real.

Then the cock crowed in some hen house not far enough distant. Horatio watched as Hamlet's limbs lost their lines and faded into nothing, leaving the blanket to settle upon the mattress once more.

"Hamlet." His voice cracked upon the name.

Only the cock crowed for answer.

No knock came at the door until the sun had pulled the covers down from his head, long enough for Horatio to have well regained the semblance of himself. Awaiting him without he found, not only a servant who slipped past him to take charge of his trunk, but another who he knew scarcely by sight and but little more by name, Cerdic, a scholar but young in his books, attached to Fortinbras' train.

"My lord Horatio," Cerdic said, and bowed as if he had earned such a grand name in more than his earnest love for his prince.

"My lord," Horatio said, with an equal bow. "All lies in readiness -"

"And the wind is in your sails. I come to bear you to your ship with words both mine own and not mine own."

"Of what temper?" Horatio followed Cerdic out into the mazed corridors of Elsinore, the stone cold beneath his booted feet for what, God willing, would be the last time.

"For the message I bear, I can but repeat it and you must be the judge: the king Fortinbras sends his greetings and his farewell, together with the first assurance that when time shall have passed sufficient to have dulled sharp-tongued rumor, and dried to summer's forgetfulness which memory is presently green and ripe, then his love shall remember you again who must now seem forgot."

"A gentle temper indeed," Horatio said, when Cerdic paused as if awaiting a response. "I thank the king in your person for this kind remembrance." He would rather the whole world between himself and this haunted place, unless the one shade he most desired proved unable to follow him here and everywhere, but of neither shade nor these earnest desires would it be prudent to speak. As he had been told once by a rough sailor, the walls had ears and tongues alike.

"For myself..." Cerdic hesitated, as if that thought has occurred to him as well, then said, a trifle too loudly, "I came to bid you a sweet sailing, and the most urgent hope that you shall return when these present tangled dangers that press you away shall have faded. I have with mine own eyes beheld proof that you are no common metal."

"My lord, my leaving exaggerates my virtues in your eyes."

"You do not flinch from ghost nor demon," Cerdic pressed, speeding his steps so that he reached the outer door to the castle before Horatio. He did not immediately open it, but stood with his hand flat upon it and his eyes fixed on Horatio. "Rather, you challenge them to speak, when none other dares acknowledge them beyond turning their head away in fear. Do you proclaim this exaggeration?"

"A triumph of training, nothing more. I was well-schooled." But not so well schooled as that. He had not challenged the last ghost he had seen, nor tested him to force him to prove he was not fiend from the Abyss, but very Hamlet. The prudent man that Cerdic thought him would have flinched, at the least, or would seize this opportunity to unburden his soul of all his doubts.

Cerdic sighed, then glanced about them before opening the door to him and gesturing Horatio through. "I know of no training that may force a man's spirit into such strength that he may face a spirit without quailing - none that may be procured at Wittenberg nor any other university with its dry lectures and drier books."

"Nor do I know any man who does not quail before the dread and fear of such spirits as I have had the fortune, ill or good, to encounter," Horatio said, his voice low and temperate from habit of old. This was not the complete truth, but neither was this an ear in which he had any desire to unburden himself of even the slightest concern. "I am not the paragon of learning you make me out to be. Where leads this convocation of blessings?"

Cerdic looked about them. The courtyard through which they walked was deserted save for themselves, but still he took Horatio's arm and hurried their steps through the castle gate and past the guard before he said, stumbling over the words, "I hardly know -"

"Attempt it."

Cerdic released Horatio, but did not slow his steps as he wet his lips and hemmed like a green boy. At last he looked at Horatio sidelong and said, "The lady Ophelia haunts the river, they say, with many gentle songs and soft looks, not like to the cruel sirens who sought to lure all who dared their songs to a rocky doom, but as one who hardly knows her own death has passed, were such a thing possible."

"I have heard it."

"Though her appearance may well betoken nothing, still there are those who quake with fear and will not pass that place lest they should see that seeming shade, and others still who aver with many mouthings that the dead do not walk without some greater cause than an uncertain death and hastened burial."

"If this were so, then Polonius, not his fair daughter, would now trouble all our sleep."

Cerdic grimaced at that, and glanced around once more, as if he thought some creeping spy might have followed them down from the castle, and lowered his voice so Horatio had to speed his own steps and keep pace with him in order to hear. "So I have told myself, but then I have argued against it that any ghost comes not except through a breach in the natural laws of order that keep all in peace."

"So have philosophers argued betwixt themselves for this age," Horatio reminded him. "The ship awaits, with a favorable wind in her sails." A goodly breeze, at any rate, and he did not think Cerdic knew any more of seacraft than he did himself. So let his slight deception pass unnoticed. They approached the docks even now. "I pray you, grow to a point."

Cerdic stopped, so abruptly that Horatio did not notice until he was two or three paces beyond. "My lord - I intend to go and speak to Ophelia's shade." He paused as if he thought Horatio would speak, but when Horatio did not, he said, "Will you not tell me with what words, what courage, you challenged the dead king, and that which walks within the corridor?"

_You should not have let me sleep so...it is a dream._

No. He had greeted the ghost of the king with words cold and terrified, _What art thou? By heaven, I charge thee speak._ The ghost of the prince he had not challenged at all, but wept, and spoke to him only in the guise and semblance of a dream. Upon his arms he still bore the aching remembrance of Hamlet's proof that it was more than dream.  
Here was opportunity to cross-examine himself against the dangers of dealings with spirits, and ask of another's eyes proof that he did not embrace to his heart some demon in Hamlet's seeming, come to damn him. Horatio had been a wise man once, not governed by crude passions. Such a man should speak in this instance, and not be silent.

_What mercy has been granted me, I grant to you._

"I spoke according to the book," Horatio said, "each thing as it is set down in such a circumstance. As to courage, I would not have you speak thus, for only the words to be said and the spurring of my companions kept me to it." He offered his hand to Cerdic. "And so farewell. My honor and duty to the king, and what good fortune I have possessed, I leave it in your hands."

Cerdic frowned, but took his hand. "Godspeed, my lord," he said, and opened his mouth as if he would say something further, but then shut it and bowed his farewell instead.

* * *

It was not a far sail, nor a difficult one: they hardly passed beyond sight of shore as they crossed the inner locks of the sea between Elsinore and the uncertain lands to which they would be delivered. Once there, Horatio was greeted as a gentleman, but not marked out in any way from his fellows. If the captain of the ship, or the commander to whom he reported himself, had been given note of who he was, neither gave signs of such knowledge. Indeed, not until a week after his arrival did Horatio have cause to believe the commander knew his name as more than one upon a list.

A week after he had settled in, a servant came to summon him to the commander's rooms. Horatio followed, and at a gesture, stepped within. The room was close and dark, lit only with a candle that flickered with his movements. No wind stirred within that space, nor evening chill dared its confines, but rather it held the sullen heat of the season, like the vaulted antechamber to Hell itself. The commander bent over a table whereon was laid flat a map of that region, there tracing the lines of mountains and sea with one careful finger, and did not look up at Horatio's approach, but said only, "You are well come, good sir."

"At your command, my lord."

"Know you aught of the grander intent of Fortinbras?"

"Not I, my lord."

The commander stood, then, and shook his head frowningly at the map. "I hear such mingled reports as trouble my mind. The Polack likes not Norway's growing power, and shall surely strike as would a jealous adder at our heels, but one says the blow shall fall here, another there."

He looked up then, sudden and quick, and looked at Horatio as if he expected all the Polack's plans to come spilling from his lips. Instead, Horatio held his tongue. He had heard naught himself, and would not further stir the brew with idle speculation.

"You are Horatio, they tell me," said the commander, at last. "A man of prudence and wisdom alike."

"A generous voice might so describe me. I am a scholar, sir, who long studied in Wittenberg ere I went to Elsinore."

"And a fair hand for writing," the commander said. A sudden smile lit his ruddy face, greater than the candle could illumine. "Else I quite mistake to whom I may attribute these reports: two weeks ago, they were writ in such a crabbed hand that bright Uriel himself could not decipher it."

"You do not." And grateful he had been for such employment. He was no soldier.

"I did not bid you here to offer you my thanks, meager though it may be," the commander said, the smile faded complete, "but rather for reasons twofold. The first is to bid you to the watch. We are few enough here that I must tear you from your tables and turn you to sterner duties, little though my eyes may thank me for it else."

"Name the hour and I shall be close upon it, my lord." No strange ghosts walked here, no stern reminders that all was not well. None here needed such a chill reminder.

"Do you go to the captain of the watch and he shall appoint you," the commander said. "For the other, this came by messenger from Denmark, and I am bid give it to you."

"My humble thanks," Horatio murmured, and accepted the folded letter. Who might be writing him? Not Fortinbras: he required nothing from Horatio but his silence.

"Go your ways," the commander said, and waved him out once more. Horatio bowed himself out, then turned his steps toward his own rooms once more, breaking the seal upon his letter as he went.

_Most honored Horatio, as I did speak with you touching upon this matter, I thought it meet that you should know the outcome. I have spoken to the shade of the lady Ophelia..._

* * *

"Halt! Who's there?"

"One who serves the king, like to yourself."

The soldier before him, who had stiffened in his place upon Horatio's approach, relaxed once more at the words of the countersign. "You come most welcome, then. The night lies quiet beneath these heavy clouds. You should have good watch."

"If the clouds do not part withal and drench us all," Horatio said, and was gratified at the man's sharp laugh. "Get you to bed."

"For this relief, much thanks. Good night." The soldier - Horatio had not asked his name - strode off to the door beside the gate.

Their garrison stood behind walls thick and sturdy, before which a watchman paced constantly lest the Polack catch them unaware. A hundred paces out, beyond the sickly light of torches or such stars as dared peep, a tall tower stood, wherein the rival of Horatio's watch already stood, his eyes thus enabled far beyond what Horatio's could devise. No clocks tolled the laggard hours, nor might he mark the time by the turning of the wheels of heaven above him, not on such a darksome night as this. He had only his own pacing to mark the passage of time.

He did not sleep, nor was he tempted so to do. The heaviness of the air pressed not on his eyes, but at his limbs and heart like an echo of his unfaded sorrow. Though he was not tempted to drowsiness, the darkened sky that covered the earth in its silence dulled the edge of watching.

"How goes it?"

"All's well."

"Well enough in the common way. But I know full well where the Polack sits and plans his grand devising, and it is not near to thee, nor did I so inquire."

"A general inquiry must be met with a general answer, my prince." He did not dare raise his voice: his fellow in the watchtower beyond, should he slacken in his own duty, could well enough both see and hear Horatio, and the walls were not so thick that a voice could not be heard on the other side. "Ask to the point, and I shall requite you."

This was met with a frustrated sigh, and his companion did not immediately speak. Then Hamlet said, "They treat you well, I trust."

"Well enough."

"It is a bitter task to which Denmark has sent you. I do not speak of the air -" Hamlet caught Horatio's hand before he could do more than grimace in response. "The air is warm and sultry, indeed, and wraps the body in such comfort as may be found from empty air. Nor do I doubt that your companions treat you with kindness and respect, for you are such a man as earns respect from all quarters, and deserves it in equal measure with its earning, if indeed his deserving does not outpace what rewards report may offer."

Horatio held his tongue, both that he might not be heard by the living within earshot, and because he could not think what to say to such extravagance. His lord would grow to a point soon enough.

"What letter did you receive this day from Elsinore?"

"From Cerdic, my prince," Horatio said, after a moment's startlement. Some connection there must have been, to draw Hamlet's mind from this to Horatio's correspondence, but he would learn it in due time. "He spoke to dead Ophelia."

"A man of learning, indeed, if he dare approach the unknown dead and speak to a spirit without ways, other than are written in scripture and by certain priests, to determine whether it be a demon in fairest form sent to deceive the unwary, or indeed the fading soul of that gentle maid. Say on."

"He used such strictures as are meet and given for that circumstance-" and which indeed he had listed off, as if he feared Horatio would not believe he had obeyed every law it was possible to apply to such a case, "-and she answered him, although in such a strange and wandering guise as indeed was her state when she met her death."

Hamlet looked away for a moment, but did not leave Horatio's side. "What answers gave she?"

Horatio shrugged. "Of distant travels and running water, lays of childhood and old age all mixed together. She said she saw her brother again, and the Queen your mother." He hesitated, but no more than a breath's pause. His brave prince would not ask, but it closely concerned him, and so he must know. "She spoke of you."

He felt, more than saw, Hamlet's sharp look at him. Hamlet did not speak, but waited for his turn.

"When Laertes came to her side, she had expected you close behind him, or if not with him, then with the Queen. But still you did not come, and so she waits beside the willow for her Hamlet."

"Poor maid," Hamlet murmured. "Long shall she wait, for I shall not go."

"Never, my lord?"

"Not alone."

Horatio glanced up, then out. The night did not tremble with approaching troops, nor did the tower beyond shout back with warning or with wary question of his behavior, nor had any called from within to ask why he murmured as to himself in conversation with the barren ground. He might dare a little farther. So he turned and faced Hamlet fearlessly.

"Is it long, then?"

In this darkness, his dear prince seemed pale and ghost-like indeed. He stood and spread his hands and did not speak, but did not flinch from Horatio's gaze, either.

"A while, you said," Horatio whispered, and for all he might do to hold it, his voice shook upon the words. "Was this sin greater than we dreamt, that we are thus condemned to hellish half-measures? Say but the word and I'll complete what once I started."

Hamlet's hand fell upon his wrist, holding him from drawing his sword from its sheath. "It is not given to the dead to foretell what is to come," Hamlet said, rapid and low. "We may see warped shadows only, or pass on what some passing angel shall tell us for the benefit of the living. This reassurance I may give thee, as it was given to me; before the year-wheel has turned past the months of autumn, and the golden shades of harvest faded to the cruel starkness of winter's smaller deaths, thy desperation shall have passed."

Indeed. If all his reading had taught him aught, Horatio had learned this, that prophecy was of all arts the least exact, and even an angel's foretelling would choose words carefully, because a single syllable might lean the phrase other than it seemed. "As you will," he said aloud. "Be it ministering angel or some shadow of grace, I thank thee for what comfort it may give."

Hamlet smiled, and let go his wrist again, his hand rising and hovering in the air as if he thought to clasp Horatio to him. Horatio waited in his turn, but Hamlet turned his hand and brushed the backs of his fingers against Horatio's cheek instead, a poor echo of a kiss. "The dawn approaches," he said, and did not even pretend to whisper. "I shall see thee soon, Horatio."

Horatio glanced involuntarily toward the east, which remained as palled and black as before. When he looked back, Hamlet was vanished.

* * *

The Polack attacked in the heat of the afternoon. This, Horatio supposed, was the reality of war. The shout came from the guard with hardly enough time for half of those within to take up their arms. Horatio, writing over reports, had only his sword to hand, and the enemy was within the walls before a man could breathe thrice.

He killed one, but the dead man was not alone, and his companion was faster with his spear than Horatio was with what poor defense he might muster with chair and table. Horatio fell to the floor, scarce able to breathe, and waited - but the one who'd so stabbed him did not stay to be sure of Horatio's death, only hastily grabbed a handful of the papers that had fluttered to the floor and ran from the room. Horatio would have laughed aloud, did not each breath bring further pain. The Pole would be sore disappointed when he realized he had but taken the scratched and blotted scrap paper that had been left aside for odd use.

His mind did not fade into blessed oblivion, though he waited in vain for it to do so. Instead, the sharp pain kept him in terrible wakefulness, so that when he heard footsteps approach once more, he turned his head to see. Had he breath, he would have prayed for it to be the enemy returned. Let it be over. But it was not. Nor was it the dark shoes he had half-thought else he might have seen, the nearness of his end granting exemption at last. Instead, it was two of his fellow soldiers, who halloa'd the room and exclaimed when they saw him and brought him against his will to the long rows of hospital beds.

Here, the world began to fade. Sometimes he slept, or thought he slept. Other soldiers came into this room of makeshifts, some walking, some carried. A boy, somewhere in the distance, sobbed and could not muffle the sound. How many dead? The commander would have to puzzle out another's crabbed handwriting to know: this report, Horatio could not write.

"Horatio."

"At your service." It came out a harsh whisper, each breath uncertain. The sun must have set - might ghosts rise and walk so early? Unless he slept and dreamt again.

"Not my service, but thine own." Hamlet did not sit him down upon the cot, but stopped there, looking down at him. "In this the old tales speak aright: on this errand no man may stay me."

It was not sunset, then. The spear had gone deeper than he'd realized.

"Let it be soon," he said, and was surprised how clearly the words came. The man in the bed beside him turned in his sleep, and Horatio waited until he'd settled again before he said, more quietly, to the only ears to hear him, "Let it be _now_."

"I shall," Hamlet said, and took up Horatio's bloodied hand in both his own. "I have words to speak to thee."

"As I to thee - _ah_!" For a moment, the pain surged up, as if he'd been stabbed afresh. Then it faded like the receding tide, leaving him behind with head cleared as it had not been these many weeks since.

" _Horatio._ "

"Here," Horatio said, and sat up at the pull of Hamlet's hand, much puzzled, but only for the space it took to say _one_. He did not look behind him at what he was leaving, but rose to his feet with his prince's steadying hands upon him. The room seemed to fade around them with each breath, leaving in its place the clean cobblestones of the street before their lodging in Wittenberg. There had been nothing to keep them there, not any longer, and they had other business to attend.

There would be time enough to speak of that business. "Here, my prince," he said, and dared a joyful kiss.

"Welcome," Hamlet murmured against his mouth, and swept him indoors.

  
_**-end-** _

__

_****_

 


End file.
